Thesis
A study on teaching statistical concepts at the introductory level : the development and testing of a teaching model and an investigation into the methodological techniques
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 1997
- Thesis identifier
- T9039
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- An attempt was made to develop a teaching model that could be used to teach basic statistical concepts at the introductory level. The basic framework of the teaching model comprised three teaching components - Provision of Supplementary Notes, Working in Pairs and Teaching Concepts in Worked Examples. These components were identified from a review of studies on teaching methods and an investigational study of students' learning patterns. The methodological techniques used included observational studies of teaching in lectures, tutorials and practicáis, self-report questionnaires on students' learning and teachers' difficulties in teaching statistics, controlled experiments on teaching models, and direct interviews of teachers and lecturers. The experimental studies on teaching methods were conducted at the University of Strathclyde and the interviews took place in schools and universities. The aim of the main experiment was to test the efficacy of the teaching factors and the effectiveness of the teaching model. The most suitable experimental design was a 23 randomised factorial block design with several factors confounded and partially confounded. Eight treatment combinations were tested in small classroom experiments. The main findings indicated the importance of the teaching combination with all three factors present - concepts presented within a worked example, the provision of a supplementary notes and the organisation of students to work in pairs. The implication is that the combination of all three teaching components is required in helping students to learn and it is therefore recommended that this model be further tested in another educational setting. As well as providing information on the teaching model, this thesis also provides insights on the use of different methodologies. All these methodologies had their advantages and disadvantages but the controlled trials gave the tightest results while the observational studies did not contribute to the testing of the efficacy of the model. Direct interviews have the scope to provide the most detailed information and the use of QDA together with multivariate analysis techniques can help to find patterns among different response patterns.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Robertson, Chris
- Mitchell, Jane
- Resource Type
- DOI
- EThOS ID
- uk.bl.ethos.275968
- Funder
Relations
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